The Stevens Pass Greenway and the Cascade Loop
Near Stevens Pass Area, Washington
The highway you are driving has an official name, the Stevens Pass Greenway, a designated scenic byway and the southern leg of the great Cascade Loop. It is recognized as a National Forest Scenic Byway, and it follows, almost exactly, the old Great Northern Railway line up and over the mountains. From near Monroe the route climbs east through small former railroad and logging towns, tracing the Skykomish River past forest, waterfalls, and canyon walls to the crest of the pass at about four thousand sixty feet.
The Cascade Loop it belongs to is a roughly four hundred forty mile drive that stitches together saltwater shorelines, mountain passes, and the dry orchard country on the far side of the range. What makes this particular stretch special is how much history rides along with it. Nearly every mile has a story beneath it, a vanished snowshed, a drowned railroad grade, an abandoned mining camp, a town that was lifted off its foundations and set back down.
The two lane road is a modern convenience laid over more than a century of struggle to move people and goods across a mountain barrier that, for a very long time, did not want to be crossed.
